Grumpy Gus, Spinning, Weekend in Review

I am grumpy. Do not try to cheer me up. It makes me feel manipulated. And when I feel manipulated, that's just a micron away from sheer, foaming-at-the-mouth, unhinged, unadulterated rage.

<hulk>Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry< /hulk>

Maybe not even a micron.

In other news, I

* Rescued stranded party-goers in the wee hours of Sunday morning. Beaucoup karma points for me, as they were going 20 miles south and I was headed 30 miles north, home after work. There was a fracas with their cabbie on the way home from a concert in Solana Beach and they got dumped. At about 1:30 in the morning. In Miramar. Near the business parks. Man, there was no one there. The McDonald's on that corner rolls up the sidewalk at 10pm. We're talking no one. Good Samaritan, that's me. Truckin' complete strangers around Pacific Beach at 2 am. One of them insisted on giving me 'gas money'. I've earmarked it for the first bum I see. I don't take money for this kind of stuff.

* Oiled and assembled and began spinning on my Kromski Minstral, one of the most beautiful spinning wheels I've ever seen. Spun up some brown "unspecfied sheep" and the loaves-and-fishes lavender roving (both of these are rather bulky) in double drive mode, then switched to my test merino (this beautiful pink stuff I'll only ever use as accent yarn, so it's OK if slubby) and spun up an okay single with the wheel in single drive with scotch tension

[*quizzical look* What did that mean? There's 2 things that need to move aside from the big-ass wheel you actually see when looking at a spinning wheel. And they move around one another -- the flyer and the bobbin (where your yarn actually goes). You use different 'ratios' with different yarns (thick stuff v. thin stuff). In order to get those two things to move at different rates (ratios) -- using just the one big-ass wheel to drive them, you either use double-drive, where your drive band (the string going around the aforementioned big-ass wheel) is actually 2 bands, one you put on the bobbin pulley and one on the flyer pulley (which are different sizes or slightly different heights relative to one another), or you use one band on both so they spin at the same rate, and then put a brake on the bobbin to make it go slower. That's single drive mode with scotch tension. There's more going on, but that's it in a nutshell. Most people only ever notice the big-ass wheel, but all the action is really going on between the flyer and the bobbin. I happen to have purchased a wheel capable of both, but they're not all like that.]

* Began reading a VERY irritating edition of the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, presented as 'The Emperor's Handbook'. I didn't want a self-help book for the captains of industry with pullquotes in little gray boxes and an introduction that lasted forever, I just wanted the damn Meditations. I will finish it anyway. And then give it away when I find another copy. Maybe to a CEO.